According to a private TV channel, Dera Ismail Khan DPO Sadiq Baloch confirmed that Gandapur had been arrested. “He handed himself to the police,” Baloch said.

Following his arrest, the MPA was shifted to a safer location. The DPO suggested that the minister could not be kept in Saddar Police Station since it was a stronghold of the PTI leader and his followers. Earlier in the evening, the KP revenue minister’s house was surrounded by police.

According to the DPO, they had made all efforts to arrest the minister by deploying personnel outside his house. “Gandapur had asked for 30 minutes to prepare himself for the arrest,” he claimed.

According to the DI Khan police, vote count was under way in Hemath Adda polling station on Sunday when Ali Amin Gandapur accompanied by his brother Umar Amin Gandapur, a candidate for tehsil nazim, and his armed supporters arrived, picked up the ballot boxes and began putting them in the minister’s car.

Cantt SHO Saifur Rehman who was on duty at the station attempted to stop the minister and his accomplices from entering the station, but failed, said a local who witnessed the incident.

Cantt SHO has registered an FIR in Saddar Police Station against the minister, his brother Umar and their security guards under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, including assaulting a public servant to deter him from his duties.